BYRON - Spotting Lutheran's powerful lineup 13 points to start the game was not how Byron coach Tom Schmidt had mapped this one out.

"That was the last thing we wanted to do," Schmidt admitted Friday night.

Although his Tigers fought back to within single digits three times from that point on, it was Tom Guse's Crusaders who rolled out of there with a 75-53 victory in the Big Northern Conference divisional matchup.

"I'll tell you, when they're firing like this, they're just fun to be around, and fun to watch," Guse said of his squad (13-1, 4-0 BNC). "Anytime you can win a road game in the Big Northern it's a big accomplishment. And for the guys to come out and get it like this says a lot more."

What it said was that the Tigers may not have closed the gap on the conference's elite as much as they had hoped. At least not on a night when Lutheran's Thomas Kopelman finds his shooting stroke early on, like he did during his 34-point performance in Byron.

"We heard they thought they were closing in on us; we heard," said Kopelman, who came into the game with 29 3-pointers in the first 13 games, and had six of them Friday. "That was just motivation for all of us. Just a little more motivation."

Kopelman sparked the 13-0 run to open the game with a bouncing 3 right out of the gates, and the Crusaders knocked down six of their first eight shots, gathering four treys in the first quarter alone. But Byron's Clayton Hoover sank two of his four 3-pointers in the first period, including a buzzer-beater to cut it to 10, keeping the Tigers within reach.

Kopelman, who shot 13-for-20 from the field, had two more treys in the second, and Lutheran's lead grew as high as 19. But it wasn't until the third that he really got aggressive with his jumper.

"We knew, we just knew," the 6-foot-3 Kopelman said, "that this was a team we had to take down."

Kopelman drained all five of his shots in the third quarter, and Lutheran went 8-for-13 from the field to pull away. Senior Daniel Lowe sank a late 3 for Byron (8-5, 2-1) to cut the difference to 62-48, but that was close as it got down the stretch, and he finished with 16 points, equaling his teammate Hoover.

Joe Kellen had four 3-pointers and scored 14 points for Lutheran, and Nate Wieting tallied 13 points and six rebounds.